Barber - Test times - March 13

13 March 2013

Penske's Will Power completed a clean-sweep of all the sessions of the two-day IZOD IndyCar Series pre-season open test at Barber Motorsports Park, with the fastest times again in both the morning and afternoon on Wednesday.

Power's time in the morning session was 1:07.4981s, with Tony Kanaan second fastest just five hundredths of a second slower on the 2.38-mile, 17-turn road course. Kanaan had earlier announced that his #11 KV Racing Technology entry would be run in alliance with SH Racing in 2013.

In the afternoon, Power improved still further and posted his best lap of the entire test, with a time of 1:07.1329s. That put him a quarter of a second clear of Andretti Autosport's James Hinchcliffe, who finished the Barber outing with the second best time of the field ahead of Justin Wilson.

"It's as competitive as ever," was Hinchcliffe's verdict of how the season was shaping up. He was certainly happy to be back at work after a near-six month lay off: "The problem with such a long offseason and very little time to test is it gives engineers like six months to sit in a box and come up with crazy ideas. Then you only have like three days to try and get through all these things that they have dreamed up."

Wilson was the fastest Honda runner of the two days with a time of 1:07.4996s, a little over a tenth off Hinchcliffe. Stefan Wilson finally made his début in the Dale Coyne Racing #18 IndyCar alongside big brother Justin, but he had to wait until the afternoon session to do so because of issues with the car. Ana Beatriz had continued to drive the car in the morning session.

Dale Coyne Racing is yet to confirm its driver line up for the 2013 season, which starts on March 24 with the street race at St Petersburg.